Tweaks

In another fascinating insight into the workings of Flight Simulator X, Phil Taylor’s latest blog entry explains exactly why Autogen has such a dramatic hit on performance:

Now, a typical scene has 50 1km x 1km cells in the scene. Autogen trees are pegged at 4500 max per cell (when the slider is all the way to the right). You can set the max up to 6000, so let’s call it 5000 for easier math. 5000*50=250,000 trees.

Holy Autogen Batman! Yes, this is why autogen brings the system to its knees. Crysis doesn’t try to render 250k trees.

Now, as much as I admire the team for their creation, I really do have to ask myself why these calculations weren’t done a few years back during development! In Phil’s (and the team’s) defence, he does confess that they should have done so and at least they’re looking at them now. And it’s good to know WHY it has such a performance hit.

You can read the rest of Phil’s article here.

Ken Salter, renowned author of the popular FSAutoStart application which shuts down all non-essential services to help you get the most out of your PC, has returned with a new application  - AlacrityPC:

AlacrityPC allows you to get the most from your Windows PC by shutting down unnecessary services and programs before you run a resource intensive application like a game. When you finish, AlacrityPC will automatically restart the programs and services, returning your PC back to its original state.

AlacrityPC can also perform additional optimizations like Defragmentation of memory.

I’ll be giving this a try over the weekend. FSAutoStart was very good in itself, so this will most likely end up on most simmers "Must Have" list.

There’s an incredibly detailed post over on the X-Plane.org forums detailing how to get the most from your simming rig.

I’ve tried many of these tweaks in the past with good results, but mileage may vary for your particular setup.

As usual, if you’re going to try any of the tips, make sure you’ve got a good backup first.

There’s a long and very detailed post about one simmers efforts at optimising their Flight Simulator X experience over on the PC Mechanic Tech Forums. Mileage may vary depending on your specific system, but there are certainly some useful tips here.

I found this a while back when looking for something entirely unrelated. If, like me, you have Flight Simulator X installed on a USB drive, chances are you’re not getting the best performance. By default, USB devices are optimised for quick removal. For folk like myself who have their USB drive permanently connected, this is not required, so we want to optimise it for best performance.

When I applied this change to my FSX drive, it had a noticeable positive impact on performance. To optimise your USB drive for performance, do the following:

1. Open Windows Explorer (use the Windows key + E)
2. Right-click your USB drive and select Properties
3. Select the Hardware tab along the top of the window
4. Select your USB drive from the list and click Properties
5. Select the Policies tab along the top
6. Select “Optimize for performance” and click Okay

You’ll most likely be told to restart your computer. Do so and you’re all set.

Important note: as your drive is no longer optimised for quick removal, if you do want to remove it, you MUST do so by using the “Safely remove” option from your status bar, otherwise you risk data loss.